Curry’s 2000 comment question: Can anyone defend “hide the decline”?

Judith Curry has tackled the ‘Hide the Decline’ issue at her blog Climate Etc. The issue is that data was hidden from policymakers (and the public) so not to confuse them… and other data spliced in to perhaps give a very different message?

As temp reconstructions proxies (tree rings) were used to explain or ‘sell’ that modern temperatures were ‘unprecedented’ so global warming ‘must’ be down to humans and that policy makers should something now.

The fact that the proxies temperature decline when the thermometer readings are going up, would indicate that they are NOT a good proxy for past temperature.

I think even the most unscientifically trained politician and member of the public could see this, especially if you look at the 2 graphs above..

The screen captures are from the video Judith Curry links to (part I):

”If you’re wondering who I am, then you can find me at the Physics Department at Oxford University.”

Professor Jonathon Jones:

“People have asked why mainstream scientists are keeping silent on these issues. As a scientist who has largely kept silent, at least in public, I have more sympathy for silence than most people here. It’s not for the obvious reason, that speaking out leads to immediate attacks, not just from Gavin and friends, but also from some of the more excitable commentators here. Far more importantly most scientists are reluctant to speak out on topics which are not their field. We tend to trust our colleagues, perhaps unreasonably so, and are also well aware that most scientific questions are considerably more complex than outsiders think, and that it is entirely possible that we have missed some subtle but critical point.

However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science.

The significance of the divergence problem is immediately obvious, and seeking to hide it is quite simply wrong. The recent public statements by supposed leaders of UK science, declaring that hiding the decline is standard scientific practice are on a par with declarations that black is white and up is down. I don’t know who they think they are speaking for, but they certainly aren’t speaking for me.

I have watched Judy Curry with considerable interest since she first went public on her doubts about some aspects of climate science, an area where she is far more qualified than I am to have an opinion. Her latest post has clearly kicked up a remarkable furore, but she was right to make it. The decision to hide the decline, and the dogged refusal to admit that this was an error, has endangered the credibility of the whole of climate science.

If the rot is not stopped then the credibility of the whole of science will eventually come into question.Judy’s decision to try to call a halt to this mess before it’s too late is brave and good. So please cut her some slack; she has more than enough problems to deal with at the moment.If you’re wondering who I am, then you can find me at the Physics Department at Oxford University.”

Professor Jonathon Jones is a very brave man and I commend him on his honesty. I do hope that more scientists (I mean real scientists) will now break their silence and join in the condemnation of the “hide the decline” trick, because a trick it is. The socalled scientists who have defended it ought to bow their heads in shame. I personally no longer trust any of the “scientists” who defend and exaggerate the effect of man made emissions of CO2 and that is really a shame.

Turf Tavern: I’m sure it was built by Hobbits. Anyone visiting Oxford, find the Turf Tavern and watch your head walking in. Anyway, As a sceptical physicist, you are not alone: From the Daily Telegraph on Inflexion Point of Oil Pricing. A comment from a Harold Lewis today. Bravo to Judith
————————————————————————————–
……….Geeze, Ambrose, you need to get out and read more.

How about starting with “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists” by Roy W Spencer

maybe followed by Andrew W. Montfords book “The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science”

“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist”

For years, as I have read all the crazy, convoluted efforts of team supporters to try to justify the hockey stick (or anything else), I’ve always assumed that they just thought we were stupid and they could baffle us (or at least the public) with their BS. Surely, they couldn’t be so stupid as to believe what they were saying.

Judith Curry, you are very brave, and so is Jonathan Jones (James? note typo). How sad to NEED to rescue science-scientists from being party to a global scam that is attempting to (succeeding in?) stop developed countries in their tracks and emptying the savings accounts, and sticking it to, the remaining taxpayers in those countries. The shame is so significant that scientists (and science) will never be revered again in the lifetime of anyone alive today. This heist will only impoverish the rest of the world. And too many scientists are fellow travelers.

If professional scientists would spend half as much time publicly refuting the Gaian faith as they currently spend on publicly refuting the Christian faith, we’d get somewhere. The argument about specialization and subtlety really doesn’t work. The scientists who feel qualified to refute Christianity are definitely not Christian, yet they can see the basic logical problems clearly. Same with Gaianity. You don’t need to be a climatologist to see that the logic and facts of climatology are invalid.

In fact, you’re MORE likely to see problems when you’re not an insider. No vested interest means no self-created distortion of viewpoint. This is plain common sense but it seems to have vanished from all of science.

REPLY: This is due to some weird JPEG encoding in the first image. I’ve resaved it using a proper image editor, as well as made the notations clearer for those who were confused by “before and after” – Anthony

What bugs me most about this is that the EPA has stringent guidelines for proxy correlation demonstration that were developed for hazardous waste incinerators. Not only do you have to show correlation and precisely define the parameter/proxy calculation, but the maximum value of your test becomes your limit, so no extrapolation is permitted. These methods can be quite annoying, but when you are destroying toxic waste, ensuring that it’s actually destroyed is important.

However, when they are faced with an even more important problem, the EPA is willing to accept proxies where the proxy data is uncorrelated or even inversely correllated with real data during the concurrent period. If I tried that, I’d find myself under arrest, or at least fined so heavy to find myself unemployed.

During the course of my invetigations I was stunned to find that everybody who believed in AGW could not supply me with the test results and scientific answers to the questions I was looking for. In the end I found that AGW is not happening. It is not warming at all. Not for at least the last 3 decades. It is all just one pack of lies.http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok

I only just got around to watching the video that Judith Curry links to of Richard Muller (Director of the Berkeley Earth Project)

….and thought that a couple of screen captures from the video, describes the issue more so than all the thousands of comments.

It is good that at least one physicist and presumably a reader of her blog and the Bishop Hill blog, feels able to give her support and that this is worth serious debate.

Judith said on Muller:
“..where he discusses “hide the decline” and vehemently refers to this as “dishonest,” and says “you are not allowed to do this,” and further states that he intends not to read further papers by these authors (note “hide the decline” appears around minute 31 into the clip). While most of his research is in physics, Muller has also published important papers on paleoclimate, including a controversial paper that supported McIntyre and McKitrick’s analysis.”

Judith also said:
“The first thing that contributed to my mind change was this post at Bishop Hill entitled “Will Sir John condemn hide the decline?”, related to Sir John Beddington’s statement: It is time the scientific community became proactive in challenging misuse of scientific evidence.”

As Sir John Beddington is my country’s (UK) chief scientist, I would very much like him to explain ‘Hide the decline’ to the public, the media (BBC especially) and the politicians.

I’m not holding my breathe waiting though.

Maybe he could talk to Professor Nurse about man made CO2 % relative to natural CO2 sources whilst he is about it.

Ultimately, it comes down to, if temperatures are not ‘unprecedented’ then why is the null hypothesiss being ignored, that what we are experiencing is just climate, not assumed to be man-made climate change.

I don’t know.. I would like to be able to trust those that are doing the finding out…

AGAIN, the absolute vast majority of scientist have nothing to do with this issue..

I imagine that most would have assumed that scientists in some very small, specific fields would behave as they would do. As they become aware of this, I imagine most scientists will be concerned that ALL science is brought into disrepute because of it.

“Far more importantly most scientists are reluctant to speak out on topics which are not their field. We tend to trust our colleagues, perhaps unreasonably so, and are also well aware that most scientific questions are considerably more complex than outsiders think, and that it is entirely possible that we have missed some subtle but critical point.”

I think the above comment goes to the heart of how a small cabal of climate scientists have been allowed to get away with the idea that there is a “consensus” among scientists.

And let us not forget it was not only the deviation in thermometer readings and the tree ring proxies that was hidden. The number and identity of the proxies were mysteriously lost. And then there was the curious fact that the Russian tree ring samples, vastly larger than Briffa’s proxy choices, did not reflect the Briffa data, suggesting cherry-picking.
This whole matter was a shame. Briffa would be a respected scientist today if he had simply published his findings and the obvious conclusion that tree rings make poor temperature proxies.
Instead he willfully engaged in a fraud.

Think about it……What if Mann had been an investment banker on Wall St. instead? Or an economic advisor to the White House?

What effect his creation had, however, has been shown to be equally devastating to our economy as anything Madoff could have devised, and equally corrupt. The result of that graph of his has cost society unnecessary billions of dollars, dollars that could have actually been productive in providing food, shelter, and energy for the world’s poor. Instead, money was shuffled into the pockets of the elite and powerful.

All under the guise of saving us.

In my eyes, that puts Mann and everyone involved with the creation and perpetuation of the Hockey Stick fraud in the same category as Madoff. But not only did they cost us money, they ruined science in the process. They should be tarred and feathered.

“However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science.”

Thank God for you, Professor Jones. The “hide the decline” trick is deceit but it goes beyond deceit. The so-called climate scientists collected most of the data which showed that tree-ring data revealed cooling while thermometer data showed warming. This should have been presented as a revelation. It is not just a matter of scientists being dishonest but a matter of scientists failing to be robust and hard working. Their research had revealed that forty years of data called into question the tree ring data they presented in the hockey stick. The big news was not the hockey stick but their DIVERGENT tree ring data. The fact that they did not trumpet that data shows that they were not interested in science but in maintaining an alarmist narrative. They showed that they have no energy for the science and no interest in the science if it conflicts with an alarmist narrative. There has not been a clearer case of scientists abandoning their commitment to science and betraying science in all the history of science.

Mycroft says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:06 am
How many wheels are there left to fall off the AGW wagon before the MSM,politicians, and mainstream science to see whats being done in the name of science..or should that be money?

Well, as long as the AGW “wagon” can be hitched to an environmentalism “horse” of some color, I suspect we’ll be seeing it for quite a while. Those horses can pull a wheelless wagon very long distances from what I’ve seen.

Since I have been following “hide the decline” in 2009 I didn’t realize the scale of the misrepresentation until I saw this post. It makes me angry all over again, but my anger is tempered by the actions of the politicians in Copenhagen and Cancun. They have ben unwilling to commit precious political (and financial) capital when the basis for making such a commitment is grounded only in computer models and not backed up by real data.

I eagerly anticipate Lord Monckton’s next evisceration of the Team for its scientific dishonesty.

Barry Woods says; The fact that the proxies temperature decline when the thermometer readings are going up, would indicate that they are NOT a good proxy for past temperature.

Proxies is plural, it is a single proxy that diverges from the temperature record. Prior to this very recent divergence the proxy record in question showed good agreement with the other proxies over a six hundred year period. From that it is reasonable to infer that the proxy is a fair historical record.

I think you will find that most of us physicists would stand four-square behind Professor Jonathon Jones in “condemning this blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science”.

“Hide the decline” is unacceptable to all true scientists. It may be best practice in “climate science”, but then there isn’t much science in “climate science”.

Professor Jones – well done, sir, for defending proper science and for your integrity in identifying yourself. If only more would do the same!

Perhaps you could have a word with your Vice Chancellor about speaking to your university colleague who wrote that incredible Nature paper (severe flooding in 2000) and who has dragged your univerrsity into disrepute. (It may be best not to disturb your Chancellor (Patten), as he will have his hands full trying to sort out the mess at the BBC).

It would be terrible to see Oxford vanish into the academic dustbin of history, like East Anglia.

Anyone not yet having read the thread in question should do so. It’s simply amazing to read Gavin and his sycophants obfuscating for all they’re worth in absence of merely deleting the unfavourable questions and responses as is the first tenet of RC.

Kevin MacDonald says:
February 25, 2011 at 9:01 am
Prior to this very recent divergence the proxy record in question showed good agreement with the other proxies over a six hundred year period. From that it is reasonable to infer that the proxy is a fair historical record.
=====================================
Kevin, they are all calibrated against instrumental temperature records.
Obviously tree rings were calibrated against temp data before 1950, because in just that very short period of time, they completely fell apart.

If tree rings can fall apart that fast, they are totally worthless…………….

Were tree rings picked to match a certain period of temp data….
…or was the temp data picked to match a certain set of picked tree rings

Dear Professor Jonathon Jones. Thank you so much for saying this so eloquently: “However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science. ”

Exactly. This is what has infuriated me as a scientist who is not an expert in climatology. The ‘trick’ of ‘hiding the decline’ is NOT good science, in any discipline.

Mann and his gang are certainly guilty as charged.But I think they are just useful idiots who were promised purple robes and fame,we have to look further up the ladder for real truth of where this really began.A good place to see this is at THE GREEN AGENDA site.

It would make great sense for those who still support this dubious scientific process to put it to one side now. After all a train crash on the process does not mean a train crash on the content of AGW – but by fighting the wrong battle (on process) they are allowing a train crash on their content. Messrs McIntyre, McKitrick and Montford are all clear that their work in now way disproves AGW, yet the prodigious argument on Dr Curry’s blog will discredit the scientific work of climate scientists such as Dr Schmidt unless they back down on this process issue. That would not be good as their knowledge and views remain important.

There may arise a cascade of truth sayers. The next few years will be interesting politically and scientifically as to how long the money pit will stand up to this grand dececption. Blessed are those willing to stand up and be counted.

I don’t think Jon Jones is in much trouble with his physics colleagues. Coming from a physics background myself, we regularly held the other sciences in contempt for exactly the sort of reasons demonstrated in this mis-use of data. You just wait until the physics modeling community figures out what’s been going on in climate science.

Actually, is there anyone here from a computational physics background that works with climate modelers? If so, what have the discussions sounded like?

Any scientist would know that the divergence problem meant that there was a problem with the data. It immediately meant one of the following:
1. That if the tree proxy data was sound then the modern instrument record was wrong (prime candidate being bad adjustments to raw data); or
2. If the modern instrument record is sound then the tree proxy data is unreliable and therefore cannot be relied upon for any period outside the instrument period to which it was calibrated; or
3. A combination of both the above.

The ‘scientists’ involved knew that this was major problem and they discussed between themselves that coming clean about this proble would dillute the message. Why would it dilute the message? Answer, even a lay person would appreciate that the record that they wished to present was unreliable and either there was a problem at one or other end of the graph.

The problem is that this was not clearly and openly set out in the summary for policy makers and the graph doctored as it was promoted to pre-eminence and used as the poster child.

It is all very misleading and no genuine scientist could possibly seek to condone the practice.

It is good to see some scientists coming out and acknowledging that this practice is unacceptable.

Indeed. Dr Schmidt and his people remind me of the Yorkshire saying – what they know will fill a book, what they do not know would fill a library. What is good in their one book will be lost to the library if they do not acknowledge this error of judgment on the process.

“However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science”
Thank you, Professor Jones for having the courage to put your head above the parapet. You have won the admiration of very many people today and it is to be hoped that you will be emulated by many of your colleques in the days and weeks to come.
Thanks also to Judith Curry for continuing to insist that integrety has to be evident in the debate.
Its down to all those silent scientists, regardless of their disciplins, to recognise bad scientific practice and to roundly condem such practices in public. In my opinion, that is the only way back for science and it will be a long journey, best to start right now.

gman says:
February 25, 2011 at 9:41 am
Mann and his gang are certainly guilty as charged.But I think they are just useful idiots who were promised purple robes and fame,we have to look further up the ladder for real truth of where this really began.A good place to see this is at THE GREEN AGENDA site.

Really, bear in mind that ‘Mike’s Trick’ isn’t what’s shown above, his paper in Nature clearly showed the distinction between the reconstruction and the thermometer temperature.
The legend clearly spelled out that the red line was temperature.
As far as Briffa was concerned rather than ‘hide the decline’ in the tree proxies he wrote two papers in prominent journals pointing out the decline!
As far as deception goes check out the second graph above, the black curve claiming to be from Briffa, (QSR, 19,87), well it isn’t, I guess the physicist who ‘understands graphs’ is pulling a fast one?

Well, as long as the AGW “wagon” can be hitched to an environmentalism “horse” of some color, I suspect we’ll be seeing it for quite a while. Those horses can pull a wheelless wagon very long distances from what I’ve seen.
I cannot resist: a wheelless wagon is called a sled, and it will be sliding over all that white from AGW landscape /:)

OT but does anyone know which two new studies these Dems are hanging their hopes on?

“Two key House Democrats called on Republicans Thursday to hold a hearing on the latest climate science amid efforts by the GOP to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate authority.

In a letter to the top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) pointed to two new studies that link climate change to extreme weather.”

Just as I am bound, as a citizen, to dial 911 (US) if I see an armed man holding a gun on the clerk at the local Stop-n-Rob, scientists (educated by tax money and/or drawing a government paycheck) are citizens who are obligated to stop robbers who are hiding behind spurious science.

While I am greatly heartened by Prof Jones’ entry into this arena and thank him heartily for it, I am seriously pissed by the hundreds of scientists who know the AGW crowd are charlatans and will do nothing about it.

It is truly refreshing to read Dr Jonathon Jones’ statement above. What a change from the garbage from all of the ‘researchers’ who are tying themselves in knots attempting to defend the indefensible. Bravo Dr Jones!

Here is the link to Richard Muller’s video that Judith Curry links to..
Her webpage is a bit slow to load for me (must be all those comments)

The whole video is well worth watching, Richard as I, clearly believes in the possibility of AGW, the issue is of course is the degree (sorry) of it. And he takes the alarmists to task. (ie 20 foot sea level rise, Hansen, etc)

The actual section where the screen caps above are taken from is at about 3o minutes in, and his words are harsh.

In the first study, scientists from Canada and the United Kingdom examined the increase in severe rainstorms, snowfall, and other weather events in the Northern Hemisphere. Using detailed computer models, the scientists concluded that these increases are the result of rising greenhouse gas emissions, not natural variability in the atmosphere. They also found that the likelihood of extreme precipitation on any given day rose by 7% over the last half of the 20th century. In a companion study, scientists at the University of Oxford examined the severe rains and floods that afflicted England and Wales in 2000. They found that rising greenhouse gas emissions “substantially increased” the risk of these floods occurring by up to 90%. These peer-reviewed studies were published in Nature, one of the world’s premier scientific journals.

In my past life (product mktng mgr in High Performance Computing at HP) I had frequent occasion to speak with scientists working in the area of climate computations. One of the most memorable was a discussion at lunch with a group from Hamburg (Klimatrechenzentrum Hamburg). I was asking about the modeling grid – one of them proudly said – we’re down to 100Km! Another said, but not for Paleo. That pretty much summed it up, and they were just as insecure about their values for vulcanism. This was in 2006, they got a new box since then, but I don’t think their grids are 10x better, nor are their parameters replaced with actual measurements.

So here you have one of the major financiers of one political party pushing the “Green” agenda making a mint on that policy. You then have the makers of that policy getting jobs in companies created by that policy.

It is robbery of the taxpayer. It is corruption on a scale this country has not seen since the Robber Barons. In fact, it is a huge new crop of robber barons.

In regards to the Honorable Henry A. Waxman and Bobby L. Rush request for a hearing to review the two new studies as noted by
“Al Gored says:
February 25, 2011 at 12:10 pm
OT but does anyone know which two new studies these Dems are hanging their hopes on?”

Barry Woods says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:20 am
Has anyone updated the proxies since ?

Stephen McIntyre gave a presentation at Ohio State Univ. in 2008 with the title “How do we “know” that 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium?” There he presents a rather humorous story of updating a proxy. In the copy I have this begins on page 15 with a question, namely: “Why haven’t the proxies been brought up to date?” An update with photos is then described.

With computer and server changes since the fall of 2009, my links to that no longer work. Maybe someone can find it.

“Prior to this very recent divergence the proxy record in question showed good agreement with the other proxies over a six hundred year period. From that it is reasonable to infer that the proxy is a fair historical record.”

No. it shows that all the proxies are too coarse or inaccurate to adequately reflect climate variability.

Note too that the problem is at BOTH ends of the chart. The handle of the hockey stick is too flat due to inadequate proxies and data ‘adjustments’ which removed the MWP and LIA. The blade of the hockey stick is affected by UHI contamination, more data ‘adjustments’ and, yes, a little bit of natural warming.

JDN says: February 25, 2011 at 9:56 am
“Actually, is there anyone here from a computational physics background that works with climate modelers? If so, what have the discussions sounded like?”

This year we intend to subject the debris to an extreme level of laser cooled magnetic confinement to try and demonstrate that the radius of rotation of the some of the quarks constituents can actually be less than the plank length!

Ppffft, that’s nothin I’m gonna model the climate on the earth for a thousand years on my I-Pad this afternoon. I’ll send you an autographed screen scrape later. Oh, and by the way; My grants bigger that you grant, Na na na na na.

Private expressions of concern amongst experienced, capable and well respected scientists are increasingly common regarding the malpractice, flawed conclusions of mainstream climate science.

While the MSM, politicians and NGOs propagate and amplify the flawed ‘science’ to achieve political agendas, public channels of communication remain closed to the ‘silent majority’.

There are many able scientists with relevant Ph.D.s and familiarity with the peer reviewed literature that comment on the blogs. These people are ignored by the MSM and others who often measure credibility in terms of seniority of Government or Academic position rather than on the rational and scientific merit of the arguments put forward.

It is only by people in recognised academic positions, with credible careers at stake, like Judith Curry, Jonathan Jones and Paul Dennis (UEA) identifying themselves and making public statements through the blogs that there is any chance that the MSM will begin to wake up.

Sadly much of the scientific research that is vital to our future progress and well-being depends on political and public support. Science and scientists are becoming increasingly discredited in the view of the public as the AGW alarmist bandwagon rolls on. The appalling behaviour by a relatively narrow group of climate ‘scientists’ and their supporters is already misdirecting funding from more important priorities and is a very real threat to future scientific progress.

It is time for credible academics, particularly physical scientists and engineers, to identify themselves, contribute openly and publicly through blogs such as Judith’s and WUWT and help to stop this unscientific disease that is being spread from within the climate community.

No, it shows that majority of people have trouble chewing gum and walking at the same time when it comes to a field of Science in which they are not a specialist.

There are at least two types of tree ring proxies, those where the tree ring widths are predominantly dependent on changes in precipitation levels, and those where widths are predominantly dependent on temperature. The problem is that
many people, including some so called experts in the field of tree ring proxies, do not distinquish between temperature dependent and precipitation dependent tree-ring proxies. Hence, the (totally) unnecessary confusion.

If you take the time to specifically select trees that have tree-ring widths that are strongly temperature dependent, you find that the proxy temperature records agree very closely with other totally independent temperature proxies e.g.
isotope abundances in corals and stalagmites.

I am a strong skeptic but I will not stand ideally by while others use the general ignorance of the public to destroy a valid scientific tool for climate research.

I agree: A proxy may agree nicely with another proxy, but it’s still just a proxy and NOT a true measurement of actual conditions that once existed.
Not only that, but proxies tend to blend into mush over time.

Richard Muller is clearly a “climate realist,” like most of us skeptics. However, his worry over CAGW seems to rest upon the climate models. As people who know here understand, these are perhaps the weakest part of any such case.

But right you are, with this kind of ‘evidence’ I can hardly wait too. I think Anthony et al may have already demolished both of those “peer-reviewed studies… in Nature, one of the world’s premier scientific journals” here… will go look.

Well said Professor Jones. My sentiments exactly, but delivered far more eloquently than I could.

I hope you will have the courage to forward a copy of your comments to Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, reminding him of his duty to uphold the principles of the the scientific method and the honour of the scientific professions which he so gravely failed to do when he fronted the Horizon programme “Science Under Attack.”

Incidentally, I never thought I would be singing the praises of a Professor Jones, especially on this blog.

Your description of ideal proxies is consistent with the model that the dendroclimatologists use. Your simplification ignores many compounding factors such as variable sunlight due to competition, availability of nutrients, etc. Furthermore you ignore the fact that growth ring widths follow an inverted U-shaped curve with respect to temperture. If the temperature is just right and other conditions are good then you get thick growth rings. If temperature is too hot or too cold you get thin growth rings.

Dendroclimatologists assume that their practices of tree selection are sufficient to isolate a given tree to be temperature-limited. It is difficult to know if their methods actually work, because any tree that doesn’t match their priors is tossed out because it is deemed non-responsive. See the works of Jacoby or D’Arregio for further details.

Dendroclimatology holds potential, but the science has a long ways to go before the practices live up to the ideals.

I cannot unglue myself from the screen… this is history unfolding, someone likened it to el Alamein, someone likened it to a dam bursting, someone likened it to War and Peace giving way to Crime and Punishment… ah, we still await Gulag Archipelago.

Lukewarmers are winning the Right To Speak… even if the science [to me] still needs to be examined a lot more rigorously, not just Hide The Decline but also… hey, the ice-core CO2 measurements that Jaworowski said were far too low all along… the MLO record of annual CO2 increases that simply doesn’t begin to compare with the record of annual fossil fuel use increases…

… to say nothing of the Madoff-mad-ripoffs called C*ap and Tirade…

… the serial corruption of IPCC…

… but hey, the Right To Speak first, the dam breaking makes a deafening noise as everyone appears there to speak their particular grievance after years of the Team’s gagging games.

And Judith puts forward some very important proposals in her Part III, to me the reframing of incentive for research being one of the most significant but they are all important.

Your description of ideal proxies is consistent with the model that the dendroclimatologists use. Your simplification ignores many compounding factors such as variable sunlight due to competition, availability of nutrients, etc. Furthermore you ignore the fact that growth ring widths follow an inverted U-shaped curve with respect to temperature. If the temperature is just right and other conditions are good then you get thick growth rings. If temperature is too hot or too cold you get thin growth rings.

OK. So continue that thought: CO2 is believed to have been stable prior to 1950, then increased dramatically. (This according to the Gospel of CAGW according to Mann, Briffa, Hansen, etc. Then again, now they are trying to link all climate change to CO2 going as far back as the Industrial Revolution of the early 1700’s when the Little Ice Age ended and the world’s temperatures began to rise. Naturally. As they continue to do so now….)

How do the world’s few dendrochronologists correct their “assumed” constant nutrient level, water level, sunlight level, soil level, etc for the (assumed) slow rise in CO2 between the 1880-1890’s high temperatures and 1940 high temperatures, then thhe very dramatic rise in plant growth due to CO2 between 1940 and 2010?

If they have NOT corrected for this CO2 change, what good are any other “corrections” to their prejudices about pre-selecting trees to sample to “eliminate” the other biases that have supposedly been removed by pre-selecting sample trees?

In short, is their field actually producing valid “knowledge” at any level of research and writing?

I concur with Prof Richard Muller’s conclusion regarding hide-the-decline completely that I have written the text for part of his presentation as follows. I was also one of those who were deceived by the “hide-the-decline” graph a decade ago.

These are the data that many of my fellow scientists at Berkeley used.

They say, hello, you know the public may not understand graphs, but I do.

Look at this. Here is the temperature for the last thousand years going all over the place. It is not actually temperature but they actually measured tree rings, corals, that is a proxy for temperature; goes all over the place.

Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1] and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.

In their paper, if you dig into it, they said they did something with the data from 1961 onwards. They removed it and replaced it with temperature data. So some of the people who read these papers asked to see the data; they refused to send it to them, the original raw data. They used the Freedom Of Information Act. The freedom of information act officer, on the advice of the scientist, would not release the data.

Then the data came out. They weren’t hacked like a lot of people say. Most people who know this business believe they were leaked by one of the member of the team who was really upset with them.

So I now can show you what the data that they refuse to release, the original data before they did anything. What they did was, and there is a quote. A quote came out on the emails, these leaked emails that said, let’s use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” That is the word. Let us use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” Mike is Michael Mann, he said, “trick” just means mathematical trick. That is all. Now, my response is, I am not worried about the word trick. I am worried about the decline. What do you mean hide the decline?

Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.

That is the raw data, as any Berkeley scientist would have published it. It would have said, okay, we have had the medieval warming, ice age, and now we have global warming. And there is some disagreement, but this disagreement is all over the place and that just shows the technique is not completely reliable.

What they did is, they took the data from 1961 onwards, this peak, and erased it. What is the justification for erasing it? The fact that it went down. And we know the temperature is going up. Therefore, it was unreliable. Is this unreliable [pre instrument data]? No. How do we know? We don’t know, but [hand waving]. This [post 1961 unreliability] is probably some human effect. The justification would not have survived pear-review in any journal that I am willing to publish it. But they had it well hidden and they erased that and they replaced it with temperature going up.

Let me show you how cleverly this was done. Get back to this plot [Plot 1]. There it is. They added the same temperature data to three different plots giving the illusion that there are three different sets going up. And they smoothed it, because temperature changes smoothly. If they had not smoothed it, you might have noticed, wait a minute, what is the change going right there? Why is it abruptly different? You don’t notice that because it is smooth. Smoothing is legitimate in their mind, because temperature change is not discontinuous.

So that is what they did, and what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a list of people whose paper I wouldn’t read any more. You are not allowed to do this in science. This is not up to our standards.

I get infuriated with colleagues of mine who say, “well you know it is a human field, you make mistakes.” When I showed them this, they say, “no, that is not acceptable.”

Now, here is part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before, this one

I concur with Prof Richard Muller’s conclusion regarding hide-the-decline completely that I have written the text for part of his presentation as follows. I was also one of those who were deceived by the “hide-the-decline” graph a decade ago.

These are the data that many of my fellow scientists at Berkeley used.

They say, hello, you know the public may not understand graphs, but I do.

Look at this. Here is the temperature for the last thousand years going all over the place. It is not actually temperature but they actually measured tree rings, corals, that is a proxy for temperature; goes all over the place.

Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1], and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.

In their paper, if you dig into it, they said they did something with the data from 1961 onwards. They removed it and replaced it with temperature data. So some of the people who read these papers asked to see the data; they refused to send it to them, the original raw data. They used the Freedom Of Information Act. The freedom of information act officer, on the advice of the scientist, would not release the data.

Then the data came out. They weren’t hacked like a lot of people say. Most people who know this business believe they were leaked by one of the member of the team who was really upset with them.

So I now can show you what the data that they refuse to release, the original data before they did anything. What they did was, and there is a quote. A quote came out on the emails, these leaked emails that said, let’s use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” That is the word. Let us use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” Mike is Michael Mann, he said, “trick” just means mathematical trick. That is all. Now, my response is, I am not worried about the word trick. I am worried about the decline. What do you mean hide the decline?

Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.

That is the raw data, as any Berkeley scientist would have published it. It would have said, okay, we have had the medieval warming, ice age, and now we have global warming. And there is some disagreement, but this disagreement is all over the place and that just shows the technique is not completely reliable.

What they did is, they took the data from 1961 onwards, this peak, and erased it. What is the justification for erasing it? The fact that it went down, and we know the temperature is going up. Therefore, it was unreliable. Is this unreliable [pre instrument data]? No. How do we know? We don’t know, but [hand waving]. This [post 1961 unreliability] is probably some human effect. The justification would not have survived pear-review in any journal that I am willing to publish it. But they had it well hidden and they erased that and they replaced it with temperature going up.

Let me show you how cleverly this was done. Get back to this plot [Plot 1]. There it is. They added the same temperature data to three different plots giving the illusion that there are three different sets going up. And they smoothed it, because temperature changes smoothly. If they had not smoothed it, you might have noticed, wait a minute, what is the change going right there? Why is it abruptly different? You don’t notice that because it is smooth. Smoothing is legitimate in their mind, because temperature change is not discontinuous.

So that is what they did, and what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a list of people whose paper I wouldn’t read any more. You are not allowed to do this in science. This is not up to our standards.

I get infuriated with colleagues of mine who say, “well you know it is a human field, you make mistakes.” When I showed them this, they say, “no, that is not acceptable.”

Now, here is part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before, this one

Anyone involved in the “Hide The Decline” discussion who focuses on and/or defends the word “trick” is either missing the point or deliberately trying to obfuscate the relevant issue. It makes not a whit of difference whether “trick” connotes something evil or the greatest scientific simplification of a difficult problem since Fermat’s comment in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica. The relevant issue is the phrase “Hide The Decline”. Deliberately suppressing data that was part of a study but had the potential to devalue your message is not science–it’s skulduggery.

Girma says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm“Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1], and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.”

Who is the Professor of Physics? Yourself? Or someone you neglected to quote? You seem to be contradicting yourself, to the extent that I can’t tell which side of the fence you’re sitting on.

I continue to be astonished that people are still arguing about the hockey stick trick. How did a single tree ring study somehow trump several thousand published papers full of proof of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? “Hide the decline’ refers to the last part of the Mann et al. curve, but the bigger picture is even worse! At very best, all that this study could possibly show is that these tree rings fail to show climatic trends. The geologic data is clear and unequivocal–the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice did occur globally and the hockey stick is nothing more than a really dumb trick.

Gavin, the field does not need any more summary graphs of this nature. They have done an enormous disservice to climate science and its credibility. Continuing to defend these kinds of graphs is beyond anything I can understand.

Leaving out that data and putting a “likely” confidence level on conclusions from that data is bad science, anyway you slice it.

If you don’t like dishonest, try misguided and pseudoscience.

There is no way this is defensible scientific practice.

I really hope we don’t see any more of these kinds of graphs, in the AR5 or elsewhere. I’ve tiptoed around this one long enough, I’m calling it like I see it.

Professor Jones goes onto my list of selfless heroes. On a material level,he has everything to lose and nothing to gain from nailing his colours to the mast.
I just hope he has his income stream and pension completely sorted out.
Bravo, Prof!
Could we have statements like his from a 1000 similar influential scientists? Who knows where that would lead….

The so called “divergence” of tree rings since the 1950’s is a recognized phenomenon among scientists who study this, and papers have been written about this topic. Here is a recent review of this topic:

The causes, however, are not well understood and are difficult to test due to the existence of a number of
covarying environmental factors that may potentially impact recent tree growth. These possible causes include temperature-induced
drought stress, nonlinear thresholds or time-dependent responses to recent warming, delayed snowmelt and related changes in
seasonality, and differential growth/climate relationships inferred for maximum, minimum and mean temperatures. Another
possible cause of the divergence described briefly herein is ‘global dimming’, a phenomenon that has appeared, in recent decades,
to decrease the amount of solar radiation available for photosynthesis and plant growth on a large scale. It is theorized that the
dimming phenomenon should have a relatively greater impact on tree growth at higher northern latitudes, consistent with what has
been observed from the tree-ring record. Additional potential causes include “end effects” and other methodological issues that can
emerge in standardization and chronology development, and biases in instrumental target data and its modeling. Although limited
evidence suggests that the divergence may be anthropogenic in nature and restricted to the recent decades of the 20th century, more
research is needed to confirm these observations.”

The paper cites references going back to 1995. The uniqueness of this period has a basis in science, and is a legitimate reason to discount the use of tree rings as a proxy, post 1950, while accepting properly selected tree ring data as proxies for earlier periods. If one accepts this, charges of fraud that have been made by some people are not warranted.

If people have different scientific views they should present the results of their work in the scientific literature, rather than impugn the integrity of the specialists in the field of tree rings who have published their work.

If critics of the theory of tree ring divergence, have any scientific work to show they should by all means mention it. Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work. Repetition of these charges in the echo chamber of the blogosphere doesn’t make them correct.

While the height and shape of the temperature graph of past eras, including the MWP, have changed somewhat, the existence of the blade of the “Hockey Stick” has been confirmed by scientific research done since the pioneering work of Mann et. al. was published in 1999, even when no tree rings have been used.

As a great deal of other research has shown, you can even reconstruct past temperature without bristlecone pine tree rings, or without any tree ring data at all, resulting in: a hockey stick. It also shows, consistently, that nobody is trying to “get rid of the medieval warm period” or “flatten out the little ice age” since those are features of all reconstructions of the last 1000 to 2000 years. What paleoclimate researchers are trying to do is make objective estimates of how warm and how cold those past centuries were. The consistent answer is, not as warm as the last century and not nearly as warm as right now.

The hockey stick is so thoroughly imprinted on the actual data that what’s truly impressive is how many things you have to get rid of to eliminate it. There’s a scientific term for results which are so strong and so resistant to changes in data and methods: robust.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. Trees are much better proxies for precipitation than they are for temperature, but the uncertainty of growth factors is so high, who knows what they are really saying about their local growing conditions?

And as Lucia and McIntyre has demonstrated, if you throw out certain trees, only leaving the ones you like, then add the instrumental record, the hockey stick “science” becomes a confirmation bias delusion.

The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)

For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red.
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.

Eadler, that’s the biggest problem, human selection of proxies and throwing out of data they didn’t like that was “inconvenient”. You really need to stop defending this garbage; you aren’t convincing anyone and you are just showing yourself to be a religious zealot for the cause. Mostly, you just waste time when people have to respond to your constant stream of defending the indefensible.

“If critics of the theory of tree ring divergence, have any scientific work to show they should by all means mention it. Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work. Repetition of these charges in the echo chamber of the blogosphere doesn’t make them correct.” [my link above]

As usual Adler has it backward. The charge of an “echo chamber” is adler’s personal psychological projection: blogs that censor different points of view, like realclimate and climate progress, are the “echo chambers.” The are populated with uniformly like minded head-nodders who always agree with each other. Thus, “echo chamber.” WUWT allows, even encourages different points of view. Thus WUWT does not fit the definition of an “echo chamber.”

I do agree that “Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work.” When Mann’s climate clique adopts transparency by publicly archiving all of their raw data, methods and metadata, they will be on the road to scientific legitimacy. But so far their use of character assassination [as repeatedly demonstrated in the Climategate emails] and fraud [as shown in Anthony’s graph above, and in Mann’s devious hiding of “censored” data] make their false claims nothing but pseudo-science.

REPLY: Oh puhleeze. Trees are much better proxies for precipitation than they are for temperature, but the uncertainty of growth factors is so high, who knows what they are really saying about their local growing conditions?

And as Lucia and McIntyre has demonstrated, if you throw out certain trees, only leaving the ones you like, then add the instrumental record, the hockey stick “science” becomes a confirmation bias delusion.

The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)

[figure]
For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red.
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.

Eadler, that’s the biggest problem, human selection of proxies and throwing out of data they didn’t like that was “inconvenient”. You really need to stop defending this garbage; you aren’t convincing anyone and you are just showing yourself to be a religious zealot for the cause. Mostly, you just waste time when people have to respond to your constant stream of defending the indefensible.

– Anthony
All of the ideas you mention, especially the need to understand what is the limiting resource which controls plant growth rate, is part of the science of dendrochronology and covered in the review I cited above. IF, and this is a big IF, the specimens can be selected properly with this principle in mind, there is a huge advantage in dating by means of tree rings. That is why it is so attractive. If proxies are to be used at all, human selection is clearly necessary.
Your own references indicate that as well.

You may argue that confirmation bias was at work in the elimination of the post 1950 tree rings, but there were scientific reasons expressed for what was done. Calling it fraud is not legitimate, since this problem had been discussed in the scientific literature in an open way. I don’t see why pointing this out makes me any more of a religious zealot than those who charge fraud.

It is also true, that the hockey stick graph has survived the test of time without the infamous bristlecone pines, or without any tree rings whatever, as new proxies have been developed since 1999. Whatever the objections to the procedure used to develop the original graph, it has stood the test of time as the science has advanced. It doesn’t matter how often you bring up the issue of “hide the decline”, it doesn’t change the big picture regarding the correctness of the Hockey Stick graph.

REPLY: A true scientist shows all data, and does not eliminate data that does not fit the premise, or come up with rationalizations as to why the data should be eliminated. Nor does a true scientist refuse to provide all data for replication when asked. These are the problems with the “hockey stick”.

Go ahead argue this all you want, it won’t change the data, and the TOTAL data does not support the premise. The fact that you and many others keep trying to prop up this train wreck is the most depressing and laughable thing I’ve ever seen. You really are blind. As a wise man once said, “have you no shame”? In climate science, there seems not to be because people like yourself are wholly convinced the end justifies the means, because “we are saving the planet”.

REPLY: A true scientist shows all data, and does eliminate data that does not fit the premise, or come up with rationalizations as to why the data should be eliminated. Nor does a true scientist refuse to provide all data for replication when asked. These are the problems with the “hockey stick”.
A true scientist knows how to eliminate invalid data. There is plenty of Paleoclimate data archived, including the data used for Mann 1999.

Go ahead argue this all you want, it won’t change the data, and the TOTAL data does not support the premise. The fact that you and many others keep trying to prop up this train wreck is the most depressing and laughable thing I’ve ever seen. You really are blind. As a wise man once said, “have you no shame”? In climate science, there seems not to be because people like yourself are wholly convinced the end justifies the means, because “we are saving the planet”.
– Anthony

I don’t know what you mean by total. There is scads of data listed to support the Hockey Stick here:

Since then Mann has drawn on a huge amount of additional data an analysed it in different ways, all of which confirm that the NH temperature has a hockey stick shape.http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract
Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.

Invective and admonition is no substitute for science.

REPLY: Selective use of data, as demonstrated above, is not a substitute for science. Wishful thinking won’t make the whole Briffa dataset make a hockey stick, only selective use of the dataset after 1960 and the splicing of the instrumental temperature record will, plus “tricks” so that people won’t see behind the spaghetti. Such tactics deserve admonition. In business, such tactics would earn an SEC investigation and likely a jail term. In climate science, it get a free pass by those “saving the planet” looking for that justifiable means to an end. By accepting and arguing for the lie, you become one of those people

Bravo Anthony! I watched that Muller Video BTW–very interesting…..and relevant to the eletric car debate. But he promotes some scientific assertions which are in fact a trojan horse. You have to agree there is global warming caused by man, that CO2 is the culprit, and that any action we take in the western world to curb CO2 is irrelevant due to the increasing use of coal fire power stations in China and something to do with India. I feel all the science promoted as supporting AGW needs to be taken off the table and reviewed. Because, as of right now, it’s all D.O.A. The fruit on the Gore tree. Does he have any apples that don’t have maggots in them?????

Care to tell us where that data for the black curve came from?
—————
I too am puzzled by the sharp drop at the end of tree-ring temperature proxy(black line) that the second chart labels as from Apr-Sep Briffa Quatenary Science Review 19,87. It doesn’t look like any of the charts presented in the abstract of the Briffa article available at his web site:

Perhaps the black line is from a chart or data in the Briffa article not shown in the abstract, or perhaps I am misunderstanding something. It would be ironic if the criticism of Jones for misrepresenting Briffa’s data, itself misrepresented the data. Hopefully, someone will clarify where the black line was obtained.

REPLY: Selective use of data, as demonstrated above, is not a substitute for science. Wishful thinking won’t make the whole Briffa dataset make a hockey stick, only selective use of the dataset after 1960 and the splicing of the instrumental temperature record will, plus “tricks” so that people won’t see behind the spaghetti. Such tactics deserve admonition. In business, such tactics would earn an SEC investigation and likely a jail term. In climate science, it get a free pass by those “saving the planet” looking for that justifiable means to an end. By accepting and arguing for the lie, you become one of those people

– Anthony
Your statement is puzzling. In the case of tree rings, even you agree that data must be used selectively. You yourself have agree that the limiting factor determining tree growth can vary with the situation. That is what makes dendochronology an important scientific specialty.
Humans must examine the data they are using for accuracy an relevance in order to do valid science. Briffa has done so and given the reasons for exclusion of the tree ring data with the divergence.

It has been pointed out to you, that even without tree rings the result of the analysis of temperature proxies by many climate scientists is a hockey stick.

REPLY: Oh rubbish. I have NOT agreed to what you are saying, and I resent you trying to put words in my mouth. OK no more on this subject, we aren’t going to convince each other. It’s a waste of time trying to get the point across to you about selective cherry picking of the Briffa data. It’s wrong, its as plain as day, it skews the results, the reasons for selectivity are bogus, and you are being a disingenuous troll.

It is very nice of you to post a troll like eadler. It is extremely generous of you to reply to him. I highly recommend that you ban him.

REPLY: He’s gotten a few time outs. He’s useful to point to when it comes to showing how some people refuse to look at data and methods rationally. Mostly he just wastes time. He suffers from XKCD syndrome and has lots of time on his hands to impose on others.

Of course if I ban him, he’ll run to Joe Romm like he did last time when he got a time out and tell his tales of woe about his terrible terrible treatment here /sarc . Actually I think he’s being paid to waste our time and report back. Probably on the Think Progress payroll.

So we’ll see. He may yet earn a ban. There’s only a handful of people that have earned a WUWT permanent ban. Angry irrational people like “dhogaza” for example fit that bill.

Telling comment, “Judith is brave and good” for criticizing an area of science she is well qualified to comment on. You have to be brave and good to do that? Has Gavin and his ilk corrupted the scientific method and poisoned the peer review so much that proper criticism can only be done if one is brave enough?

God Bless Judith Curry! God has given her the Grace to be forthright in defense of science. God shower Grace upon her. /serious.

She still doesn’t have a clue about scientific method, but how can you blame her? She is a climate scientist, after all. I believe that God will give her the Grace to fully understand and use scientific method in the near future. /sarc /serious

By contrast, Gavin is dug into a bunker and dares God to try to get in. /sarc

These little markers make me feel like I live under communism or some other form of government dreamed up by a lifelong third-grade school marm. /reflective /quasi-humorous.

“Proxies is plural, it is a single proxy that diverges from the temperature record. Prior to this very recent divergence the proxy record in question showed good agreement with the other proxies over a six hundred year period. From that it is reasonable to infer that the proxy is a fair historical record.”

You are joking, right? You fail to address the fact that the ClimateGate Bozos are the people who gathered the evidence for the tree-ring proxy used after 1960. Yet they distrusted their own work, did not report it, and lied in a publication to prevent those facts from coming to light. Have they no self-respect as scientists? They just toss years of their own evidence collecting over the side because it conflicts with the Warmista narrative? Are you insane? We are not. Stop suggesting this utter nonsense!

Max_OK (formerly Wren) says:
February 26, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Re Phil. says:
February 25, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Girma says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.

Care to tell us where that data for the black curve came from?
—————
I too am puzzled by the sharp drop at the end of tree-ring temperature proxy(black line) that the second chart labels as from Apr-Sep Briffa Quatenary Science Review 19,87. It doesn’t look like any of the charts presented in the abstract of the Briffa article available at his web site:

Perhaps the black line is from a chart or data in the Briffa article not shown in the abstract, or perhaps I am misunderstanding something. It would be ironic if the criticism of Jones for misrepresenting Briffa’s data, itself misrepresented the data. Hopefully, someone will clarify where the black line was obtained.

Not likely, the fact that the graph used in the presentation didn’t come from the source claimed is being ignored. There was a certain amount of disingenuousness in the presentation, for example when addressing the subject of Arctic ice melting his response was to ignore it and say ‘what about the Antarctic?’. I’m not expecting from the Berkeley group, Muller doesn’t seem like the ‘honest broker’ he claims to be.